The GOP's new hue

For a generation, the Republican Party's demographic problem has been summed up in three adjectives: too old, too white, too male.

That’s why GOP officials are thrilled by the prospect of a South Carolina gubernatorial nominee whose profile boasts another three adjectives — young, Indian-American, female.

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Suddenly, the historically monochrome Republican Party is flashing a few glints of color, with 38-year-old Nikki Haley the most prominent representative of a class that represents something of a breakthrough.

The congressional and gubernatorial primaries held so far this year have put the GOP on the verge of electing an array of diverse new faces to high office, which stands to upend the party’s country club image and perhaps even diminish one of the most enduring punch lines in American politics.

This won't solve the GOP’s deep structural problems in a rapidly changing country — namely the party’s weakness among young and non-white voters — but the unusual crop of candidates plays against stereotypes of the party in ways that are a vast relief to top Republican strategists.

There has never been a non-white female governor in the nation’s history — yet the GOP could elect two in November. New Mexico’s Susana Martinez, an Hispanic, won her party’s nomination last month, and South Carolina’s Haley, who got just less than half the vote in her primary Tuesday and is the heavy favorite in a runoff later this month.

In the West, where Democrats made significant inroads in the past two election cycles, Republicans have nominated a pair of women to run for governor and Senate in California, a woman to run for the Senate and an Hispanic to run for governor in Nevada. There also are competitive female gubernatorial and Senate candidates in Arizona and Colorado. In Hawaii, Lt Gov. Duke Aiona, who is of Chinese, Portuguese and native Hawaiian descent, is running for governor.

In Florida, 39-year-old Cuban-American Senate hopeful Marco Rubio became such a hit among conservatives that he forced a once-popular governor out of the party and is already being talked about as having a place on a future national ticket.

And after lacking a single black Republican in Congress since 2003, Republicans are fielding a number of African-American House candidate — including one, Tim Scott of South Carolina, who would be the first Deep South black Republican since Reconstruction.

"Our party is going to be led by younger and more diverse elected officials," crowed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who lent his support to a number of the candidates, in an e-mail. "They are united in embracing a rollback of government’s power, American entrepreneurial capitalism and a zeal for reform."

In the short-term, a diverse group of GOP office holders next year would translate into a new set of potential surrogates for the party’s presidential candidate in 2012. Particularly in battleground states, having a woman or minority statewide official could help in those communities where Republican White House hopefuls have lagged.